Demotic Greek in the context of "Zeta"

Katharevousa (Greek: Καθαρεύουσα, pronounced [kaθaˈrevusa], literally "purifying [language]") is a conservative form of the Modern Greek language conceived in the late 18th century as both a literary language and a compromise between Ancient Greek and the contemporary vernacular, Demotic Greek. Originally, it was widely used for both literary and official purposes, though sparingly in daily language. In the 20th century, it was increasingly adopted for official and formal purposes, until minister of education Georgios Rallis made Demotic Greek the official language of Greece in 1976, and in 1982 Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou abolished the polytonic system of writing for both Demotic and Katharevousa.

Katharevousa was conceived by the intellectual and revolutionary leader Adamantios Korais (1748–1833). A graduate of the University of Montpellier, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris. As a classical scholar credited with both laying the foundations of Modern Greek literature and a major figure in the Greek Enlightenment, he was repelled by Byzantine influence on Greek society as well as that of its successors, and was a fierce critic of the clergy and their alleged subservience to the Ottoman Empire. He held that education was a prerequisite to Greek liberation.

The Peloponnese, Peloponnesus, or Morea, is a peninsula and geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridge, which separates the Gulf of Corinth from the Saronic Gulf. From the late Middle Ages until the 19th century, the peninsula was known as the Morea, a name still in colloquial use in its demotic form.

In linguistics, diglossia (/daɪˈɡlɒsiə/ dy-GLOSS-ee-ə, US also /daɪˈɡlɔːsiə/ dy-GLAW-see-ə) is where two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled "L" or "low" variety), a second, highly codified lect (labeled "H" or "high") is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation. The H variety may have no native speakers within the community. In cases of three dialects, the term triglossia is used. When referring to two writing systems coexisting for a single language, the term digraphia is used.

The high variety may be an older stage of the same language (as in medieval Europe, where Latin (H) remained in formal use even as colloquial speech (L) diverged), an unrelated language, or a distinct yet closely related present-day dialect (as in northern India and Pakistan, where Hindustani (L) is used alongside the standard registers of Hindi (H) and Urdu (H); Germany, where Hochdeutsch (H) is used alongside German dialects (L); the Arab world, where Modern Standard Arabic (H) is used alongside other varieties of Arabic (L); and China, where Standard Chinese (H) is used as the official, literary standard and local varieties of Chinese (L) are used in everyday communication); in Dravidian languages, Tamil has the largest diglossia with Literary Tamil (H) used in formal settings and colloquial spoken Tamil (L) used in daily life. Other examples include literary Katharevousa (H) versus spoken Demotic Greek (L); Indonesian, with its bahasa baku (H) and bahasa gaul (L) forms; Standard American English (H) versus African-American Vernacular English or Hawaiian Pidgin (L); and literary (H) versus spoken (L) Welsh.

Ottoman Turkish (لسان عثمانی, Lisân-ı Osmânî, Turkish pronunciation: [liˈsaːnɯ osˈmaːniː]; Turkish: Osmanlıca) was the standardized register of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Persian and Arabic (through Persian). It was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe ("raw/vulgar Turkish"; compare Vulgar Latin and Demotic Greek), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern standard. The Tanzimât era (1839–1876) saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (لسان عثمانی lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانلیجه Osmanlıca); Modern Turkish uses the same terms when referring to the language of that era (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi). More generically, the Turkish language was called تركچه Türkçe or تركی Türkî "Turkish".

Pontic Greek (Pontic: Ρωμαίικα, romanized: Rhomaiika, Greek: Ποντιακά, romanized: Pontiaka; Turkish: Rumca or Romeika), also referred to as Pontic, is a variety of Modern Greek indigenous to the Pontus region on the southern shores of the Black Sea, northeastern Anatolia, and the Eastern Turkish and Caucasus region. An endangered Greek language variety, Pontic Greek is spoken by about 778,000 people worldwide, who are known as Pontic or Pontian Greeks.

Like nearly all of Greek varieties spoken today, the linguistic lineage of Pontic Greek stems from the Hellenistic Koine, itself based on Attic–Ionic Greek, which later developed into the Byzantine Greek of the Middle Ages. Following its geographic isolation from the rest of the Greek–speaking world, Pontic continued to develop separately along with other Anatolian Greek dialects, like Cappadocian, from the 11th century onwards. As a result, Pontic Greek is not completely mutually intelligible with the standard Demotic Greek spoken in mainland Greece today. Pontic also contains influences from Russian, Turkish, Kartvelian (namely Laz and Georgian) and Armenian.

Demotic (from Ancient Greek: δημοτικός dēmotikós, 'popular') is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts. By convention, the word "Demotic" is capitalized in order to distinguish it from demotic Greek.

The Greek language question (Greek: το γλωσσικό ζήτημα, to glossikó zítima) was a dispute about whether the vernacular of the Greek people (Demotic Greek) or a cultivated literary language based on Ancient Greek (Katharevousa) should be the prevailing language of the people and government of Greece. It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was finally resolved in 1976 when Demotic was made the official language. The language phenomenon in question, which also occurs elsewhere in the world, is called diglossia.